Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan Markle speak with patrons at the Social Bite in Edinburgh, Scotland, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018.

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6 months ago

Paul Ryan Challenger Banned From Twitter Over Markle Post

Newser — Kate Seamons

Paul Nehlen is vying for Paul Ryan's Wisconsin House seat, and he won't have Twitter to help him in his quest. The man described by the Washington Post as a "fringe challenger" who lost to Ryan 16% to 84% in 2016 had his account permanently suspended in a move he called "the epitome of interfering with a federal election" (he wants a Congressional investigation), a "brazen [act] of censorship," and an attempt to "suppress right-wing political speech" on Monday.

What right-wing political speech was he trying to convey? He tweeted an image of Prince Harry alongside fiancee Meghan Markle, whose face was replaced with that of Cheddar Man, the 10,000-year-old Brit whose DNA recently revealed he had "dark to black skin." Nehlen's caption: "Honey does this tie make my face look pale?"

The Post reports Nehlen has a history of anti-Semitic and inflammatory tweets and has bemoaned the Cheddar Man study as a way of "disappearing whites or dispossessing whites of their homelands." He says that as a response to it, he "lampooned" the research with the Markle tweet.

Nehlen isn't the only one angling for the seat. CNBC reported last week that Democrat Randy Bryce raised more than $150,000 in the 48 hours following Ryan's tweet about the school secretary who was seeing an extra $1.50 a week in her paycheck due to the new tax changes; nearly 6,000 donations were of $1.50.